Intrigues of Angels
by beautiful-illusions
Summary: Orphan Christine Daae, dreaming through her days at the Opera Populaire with her mild, sad nature and pretty little voice, is noticed by an angel. But this time, there is no mortal heartbeat behind the mirror. Is it madness or a true divine vision?
1. Prologue

Intrigues of Angels

Prologue

For a moment, it was beautiful and real. The room was bathed in golden light, like a perfect sunrise, like the noon sun glowing through a lancet window into a dimly lit room. Like candles, peeking hopefully through the dark of night. White feathers had drifted to lay on every surface - ethereal and light, their soft plumes casting no shadows. On the dresser, on the floor. Even on her bed. But when she reached out to touch one, her expectant fingertips brushed only barren, cool sheets. She bit her bottom lip, and looked - as the fog of sleep slowly lifted, she could see the sharp, usual corners of her small room. But, no! There, by the mirror, a single white rose petal. She slid her bare feet onto the floorboards, wincing at the cold that seeped into her feet - warm until just now from their nest of soft blankets, and stepped towards the full-length mirror. He bent down and picked it up. It was as white as the pure white linen of her nightgown. She smelled it, smiled her soft smile, and padded back to her bed, to place it on the night stand. That was when she remembered the night before. Ah! Raoul. He had been harder and harder to put off, these days. And he was so charming, and backed her so easily into corners she would feel so bad backing out of.. All he had asked was dinner! And they were childhood friends. The flowers he had brought her, expensive and brilliant, sat in a graceful vase on her dresser. It was a week since Faust opened, and though she had only sung the lead the opening night, he had come nearly every night after, just to see her in the chorus. But alas, she had been forbidden. Her angel had obviously some other plan. It seemed a small eternity since she had stopped being alone here in this room. The ashes of deep grief had been smeared into her skin and hair and soul.. She was no longer the mysterious, pale flower she had been as a child, blossoming under her father's careful watch, and endless adoration. But now.. now there was something better. A love, a secret, an eternal guardian. And she was certain...certain he would never leave. Certain he could not lie to her...

But this is not the start of this singular tale of the Angel of Music. If the Angel is a hallucination of a young woman, driven slowly to beautiful madness by grief, then perhaps this story is more tragic love affair then supernatural play. However labeled, our story begins on a small, misty town in Holland, hugging the rocky coast and rich in stories and secrets...


	2. The Violinist

Chapter 1 - The Violinist

She is always the light of my world. Even now, even in these dark times. I am dying, and I have not found a way to tell her. Only that of late I have been out-of-sorts. Those pretty honey brown eyes flicker in such concern. Perhaps if I do not say, it will not be true. I have not worked in some time. My savings will hold out for another year. I still play for her - I wonder if she hears the notes falling short, occasionally, or when the shaking in my hands causes the bow to slip. She always sings for me, my little Christine.

I have always told her stories. Silly things, sometimes. With daring heroines, and adventures. Even as she grew from girl into maiden, myself barely noticing the difference sometimes. But more often, these days, the things I remember are of a darker nature. But, in this small house, darkness, like light, is appreciated for it's beauty. I tried to teach her that, I wonder if she even sees darkness at all, so bright is the glow that pools around her, an effortless shield.

Anyway, the stories had turned to dark forests, goblins, spells and tragedy. She loved them just as well - loved weeping over tragic endings, gasping at unexpected twists. I had forgotten how to tell frivolous tales, so it was fortunate she thought this. But there was one story, one from her childhood that I used to tell when she was very young, then claimed to have forgotten when she was a little older, and asked me to retell. It was not a story, you see, not in the purest sense of stories. Fantasy woven deftly into neat turns with resolutions and closure. No - this was not a story so much as a vision, and a history. A very personal one.

It started out so. When I was a younger man, cast out of my family home for spending too much money and never keeping a job, I found a violin on the street. It was not so much on the street, but forgotten amid an airing-out of a small antiques store. It may have been antique, and it was surely dusty as if laying at that spot for at least 50 years, but it was whole, and the strings were sound. On an impulse, I brought it home. I tried to play it, then, and though I showed some initial promise at the instrument, I soon forgot it, and left it at home. Time passed, months, then almost a year, and my quality of living had not gotten much better. The tenement I lived in was small and dirty, and there was not much joy in my life. During a peculiar slumber one night, recovering from a fever that had been plaguing me almost a week, I had a dream.

I had been tossing restlessly in the throes of burning, tortured sickness those past nights. This dream was cool hands on my face and body, soft comfort, release. There was a form, a figure, insubstantial, winged. Celestial, but somehow painfully, sadly human. It spoke, and its voice was even more radiant then the light - more beautifully orchestrated then any composition he had ever heard.

The angel (for, by then I had decided it was such) told me many things. I hardly remember any of them, fever-laden as I was, but I had the distinct feeling that I was no longer asleep, and that the angel was in the same room with me. It touched my hands, and that is the extent of what I remember. The next day, I picked up my forgotten violin. When the notes came out beautifully, I was surprised..and thought immediately of the angel. Eventually, it consumed me - music became my art, indelibly. It was like possession, but so beautiful and fragile that no demon could have been responsible.

Our correspondence did not end there. Through my career, the bright shadow of the angel trailed me. It would speak beautiful promises in my ears. When I married, it disappeared for years. When my wife died in childbirth, and a lovely daughter, so much like her, came to soften my grief, the angel still stayed away. By this time, I was making a comfortable sum with my playing, and had gained a degree of notoriety. No one ever knew my secret. When Christine was 4 or 5, it came back suddenly, and with no explanation. It asked me questions about her, sometimes. In a sly way, as if to seem like they were unimportant. My angel was sometimes so human, like I have said. I never truly believed, myself, through my life. I thought, at least half the time, that it was some form of madness that had overcome me. When Christine was older, I stopped telling her stories of the angel, I did not want to make it jealous.

But I have been telling them again. The stories of my angel - and it is always around me. I hear the faint rustle of it's wings behind me, see the warm glow it casts from around corners. I am dying, too young. A wasting sickness. I know, and it knows. And it has been watching Christine. I want it to find her - to speak to her. I hoped and prayed it was real, then, and not madness. I wanted it to inspire her, to uplift her life as well. It was my last wish.

Now, I can hear her small hands rattling the locked door handle, and all I can think is that I do not want to see her worry as I die. I want to remember her laughter, not her tears. I have already made arrangements. Transferred funds, found a place for her in Paris. The Opera will take her in - on my salary for a year, and then she will have to find her own way, somehow. She will br brave, I know. And I could not bear to send her to an orphanage. She is 15. In a few years she will be old enough, and I want her with a trade - something beautiful. An actress, a ballerina. A starlet soprano.

* * *

The door was stuck. The cursed door was stuck! Or locked? But why?

"Father! Please...you worry me.."

Silence from the other end. She was nearly in tears. He had been keeping a secret. He had been keeping a bad secret! And this was it... oh god. His health had not been good. She had been waiting these months for him to suddenly spring to his feet and sweep her across the tidy living room, laughing and dancing with her and telling her it was all right. It had not happened. Now, she feared for the worst. In a last burst of unseen energy, she broke through the lock, the old wood splintering through the loose bolts of the never-used lock.

Christine's eyes grew wide. An aura of death lightly touched the room. Misted the air, laid itself obscenely across surfaces, filled empty spaces.

"Father!"

Her voice was full of helpless tears.

"Don't leave me..."

She was such a helpless, fragile creature then. A fey, a hidden flower. He had protected her too much, perhaps, in the end. When his eyes opened to meet hers, they were tired, but fiercely clear. The world had already started to slip away - inside of him there was a dull, numb feeling. His limbs had stopped aching, stopped trembling, for the first time in days. He spoke, and his voice had compassionate power he did not know it still possessed.

"It is my time, I must leave. Be strong, I know you will. I am sending you the Opera - life will be hard, I know, but it must also be wonderful. You will make it wonderful. My Christine.."

He coughed then, a little, and her eyes widened in concern, her hands clasping his larger ones.

"My last gift to you...is my angel of music. It has looked after me these many years, and will find you, if you are good. Your talent will shine like your beauty...like your kindness. My little girl. My.."

His eyes closed, and he clutched her hands more tightly for a moment. Then the life passed from his body with a sigh. It may have been a trick of the light, through her tears, but Christine thought she saw a warm glow from the corners of the room.

* * *

Her dress was a solemn black, her long dark tresses bound back tightly. Her face was pale and ashen. She had wilted in the weeks between her father's passing and the voyage to Paris, where his father had strong enough connections to convince charity from the managers of the great Opera House. She held nothing of her delicate feminine mystique, or mischievous, curious spirit. She was a child of dust and bones, all sharp angles and blank, sad eyes. She did not know how she would stand this place alone. He had wished for her to be strong. She never had to be strong, before.

The marble pillars and soaring pediments and statues of the Opera Populaire soared up from the far end of the square. Her footfalls were reverent, paces behind her temporary keeper, who had put her up and then escorted her here. The woman was dry and uncompassionate, and she was glad to be free of her. But afraid of what this new place would hold for her. But if nothing else, it was certainly beautiful.

On the steps of the Opera she bid a short farewell to her caretaker of two weeks, and clasped her suitcases firmly, to battle the trembling in her fingers. Up the stairs, and into the foyer, to start her new life.


End file.
